That is the allotment. This is what it costs everyone, and why it is fixable.
One number explains the whole problem, and it is not a number anybody chose. It is what is left after a budget is written.
That is the annual training allotment for a working sniper. A recreational shooter burns more than that in a single afternoon. It is not enough to build a skill, and it is nowhere near enough to keep one.
The training that closes this gap already exists and it already works. It is sold on the open market every year. Here is what it costs an individual to go get it:
That is not a line most units have. And it is not a bill an officer should be paying out of their own pocket to be better at a job that can kill them.
The training is not missing. The money is.
Well-funded special operations and federal units buy this training every year, and they should. The gap opens underneath them: regular military units and small-town law enforcement agencies, doing the same job, facing the same consequences, working from a fraction of the repetitions.
This is not a failure of any one branch, agency, or commander, and we are careful never to frame it that way. Budgets are set far above the people living with them. Pointing fingers at anyone in uniform would be both unfair and beside the point.
Because the constraint is money, not knowledge. The instructors exist. The curriculum exists. The ground exists. Donors close the distance between a unit that needs this and a unit that gets it, and the whole thing runs at no cost to the people who attend.